The latest HDDs from Samsung are the new SpinPoint
N2 Series drives which feature capacities ranging from 30GB on up to 120GB.
Spindle speed is 4,200RPM and cache sizes range from 2MB to 8MB. The drives
will be aimed at ultra-portable notebooks, Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs)
and the portable audio player market -- in other words, be prepared for 120GB
iPods and Zunes around the corner.

Samsung also provided some market
analysis on 1.8" flash SSDs courtesy of DataQuest. Research shows that
1.8" SSDs are currently five times more expensive per gigabyte than
1.8" HDDs. The gap between the two will shrink slowly within the next few
years. By 2010, 1.8" SSDs will still be roughly three times more expensive
per gigabyte than 1.8" HDDs.

Despite the price differential, storage manufacturers and PC
OEMs are pushing forward with 1.8" and 2.5" SSDs. Dell just recently
announced that it would be making SanDisk's 32GB 1.8"
SSD available to Latitude D420 ($450 option) and Latitude D620 ATG users
($300 option). Dell is also making the drive available as a standalone option
for $549.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Quite a bit better than with today's bastardized video players which have more power consumption (including the larger screen).

Generally it all depends on the chosen battery as always. Current trends are only to shrink the battery as much as possible to make a player sleek, instead of making it a mere 2-4mm thicker for 2+ times the current runtime.

Thus the answer is, no matter how much they could improve battery life they won't, players will continue to have horrible battery life because designers and impluse-buy consumers don't think about such things very much.

I say bring back the AA battery types. Put 2 x AA in would be even better, it would actually play for a couple days at a time if the screen power was kept in check. I don't mean to imply YOU would necessarily want the same thing, but that's the great thing about a large market, there can be diversity if only manufacturers recognized many users don't want to have to recharge their player so often nor use expensive proprietary Li-Ion packs.

Sorry, but I don't think this is going to happen. Consumers don't seem to be willing to accept the design compromises involved in adding standard AA batteries to their electronic devices, regardless of how long the runtime would be. The domination of the iPod has shown the average buyer is more concerned about style and ease of use, than elaborate feature sets or long runtimes. There are a handfull of DAP's that use AA's, none of which sell very well (small niche markets). I have noted several people advocating the change back to AA's, but it just isn't going to happen.